The One & Only
i don’t know what to do God. I truly do not know what to do. It is so quiet this grey morning in the world, in your world... i would like to become this quiet. Perhaps that is your wish and your gift for me. To quiet me. I don’t have to get up and go to a job I don’t enjoy. I don’t have to wake up next to a person I don’t like. I don’t have to get anyone off to school. I have nothing I have to do yet I feel compelled to do something. Compelled to know what to do. What is this? Human doing and not human being.
What would it be like to just be? To let thoughts dissolve. To pay them no attention. Let’s see.......
( an hour later)
I am still agonizing over what to do
to escape the existential discomfort I am feeling;
under it all
lies a deep familiar grief,
a sadness,
the grief of loneliness..
they say this is when we need the hand of god
on the back of our neck
to comfort and console us.
they say god is here and willing but i must ask
for him to come
and bath me in his healing light,
pour love through this useless vessel
until it is filled with meaning,
until an abundance of love overflows me
and once again
i have something to give to others in need,
they say,
you cannot give away what you do not have..
Surrender Dorothy
okay i give, i give!
we all remember having to give up, right?
“Do you give?”
you cannot wrestle free from the painful hold
someone bigger has applied to you.
“Yes,yes I give”
then suddenly relief-
but relief poisoned by a sense of shame
at your surrendering.
i should have won or at least withstood the pain!
i should have been able to break free!
I should have chosen death over giving up,
giving in,
I should have chosen honor..
But don’t they say,
your arms are too short to box with god?
why the shame?
what is there to be ashamed of?
that you are not a man?
and if you are you are a broken, weak and worthless man?
who gave you these ideas of yourself?
who judged you without mercy ceaselessly?
whom could you never please or satisfy?
invent yourself a god who loves you when you are down
and can’t get up of your own accord,
invent a forgiving god who loves you
vulnerable and imperfect,
sit here right here and continue to write because
you are really praying in the only way,
in the best way you know how.
the pen is your rabbi,
the paper your scroll,
this is the sacred work
you were meant to do,
the reason you are here,
everybody prays in different ways
and when we pray
the differences we create
to separate ourselves
from one another disappear
leaving only the essence
of who we really are,
we are One,
the one and only
*
i want to blame the world for my discontent
but i know that isn’t the problem,
I’m sitting here
tapping my pencil on the inside of my head
trying to shake loose or pry open
an answer to this ongoing
existential question:
what am i supposed to be doing
in a world of
right and wrong?
a world
where everything is evaluated,
judged good or bad,
right or wrong,
this worrying tool
i carry on top of me
that weighs me down
chops off my happiness
with a hatchet.
whose hatchet is this?
is this my dead mother’s hatchet?
that opens up the wound my shame grows in?
is this my father’s hatchet
that chops my dreams in half before they have half a chance?
is this my older brother’s hatchet
that hangs over my head and threatens to kill me
if i tell on him?
is this my first love’s hatchet
chopping at my manhood and my genitals?
whose hatchet is this?
and why
although every one is long gone
am I still surrounded by this threat?
Mother and father and brother and lover
long gone
and still i wake up fearing for my life.
whose hatchets are these?
they are mine-
why do i keep them?
when will i stop this?
how can i learn to love myself
reliably
when i am drowning in self hatred?
is this what prayer is for?
is God here waiting
for me to humble myself (again)
and admit
that i do not know how to love my self
and that I am ready to learn?
is there a man or woman in this world
who i can call
that will say the loving things to me
i cannot say to myself?
is there a man or woman in this world
who i can call
that will listen to me
say loving things to myself?
i am no deserted island
i am a man abandoned
by himself,
unprotected, unloved,
unsafe..
i am that boat on the horizon
that never sees me on this island,
neglected, ignored, and abused,
i perpetuate the past
again and again
i feel despair,
an inability to reinvent myself
i feel so far from God,
so far from safe..
i know what i need
when this mourning for the dead and dying ends,
when this premature funeral
for my hope is over
and a belief in escaping this grave returns
in times like this
there is only one hand to grasp,
and reaching up in prayer
i hold the hand of God once more
and feel the lift of trust and faith
carry me out of darkness
and back into the one and only
sky.
